Smiling under Buses

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Welsh version of Facebook officialy completed.

I had a message the other day informing me that the Welsh translation of Facebook is now complete (see screen shot). I'm not a massive Facebook fan, but I wanted to be 'down with the kids', so had to have an account. The first group I joined on Facebook was 'Facebook Cymraeg? Welsh Language Facebook?'. There's around 3,000+ members in that group, and when I heard that Welsh was one of the languages to be opened for translation, I though "I bet the fuckers think nothing of joining the group, but how may will actually help with the Welsh translation?".Well 914 in fact, which totally surpised me.The proses is quite drawn out. There's nearly 20,000 threads/phrase to translate for starters - some can be a word or two long, while some could be one or two sentances long. Once a certain amount of strings had suggestions for them, there was a next stage where each phrase had to be voted up or down.Even if Facebook is a pile of shit really, it has certianly contibuted to the future of on-line collaboration of websites and software (I hope!). This will have been the first time that the vast majority have taken part in such a task, and hopefully they will have had a taste for it and will be prepared to do the same in the future things like OpenOffice or Firefox or WordPress or....... are updated.

Pity the fools...

A few weekends back, I read about a log called Speak You're Branes (sic), which records some of the many ignorant and sometimes down right racist comments that appear on the BBC's message boards.

A collection of ignorance, narcissism, stupidity, hypocrisy and bad grammar. All the comments quoted were found on the BBC "Have Your Say" site. Yes, people really have written them. On purpose as far as I can tell.

is the description on the blog, and here's the inspiration behind the blog according to it's author in article in the Guardian:

I was addicted to clicking around the "Have Your Say" section of the BBC's website. In case you're not familiar with it, it's the bit of the site where someone at the Beeb asks a question like "Are radical Muslim clerics interfering with your wheelie bin collection schedule?" and then a gang of multi-chinned nincompoops compete to see who can get the most startlingly stupid, pompous or racist response past the moderators. Back then I was only spending a couple of hours a week sifting through the deranged mooing. Occasionally I'd pull out a particularly entertaining example and mail it to a few friends. Eventually, I think one of them asked me to stop and so I started collecting them on a website instead.

This is a great idea for a blog, listing those published in the Western Mail and the South Wales Echo. Here are two that would go straight in.

IN reply to Lyndon Rosser’s letter (Viewpoints, August 1) urging us all to shut up about Welsh speakers, like the vast majority of people in this region of the UK I don’t speak Welsh.

I, and many like me, would be delighted to shut up about Welsh but unfortunately the Taffia, who control the Welsh Assembly Government, councils and BBC Wales, to name a few, will never shut up.

It is their aim in life to shove it down people’s throats whether they like it or not. Their children will not thank them when they are older and stuck in a dead-end council or WAG job, which is only there because that’s all they were taught at school.

At the same time they will see their ex-English medium school friends in better-paid, exciting jobs working anywhere in the world. Of course that does not matter to the Taffia. Wales was good enough for them, so it’s good enough for everyone else.

I am proud to be Welsh-born, and deeply embarrassed that we cannot be more like the Scots, who speak English without an ounce of national pride being compromised.

SIR – It is not enough to provide Welsh Nationalists with Welsh-medium schools; they also insist that all state school children should be compulsorily indoctrinated in the Welsh language, even though timetable space is paramount.

If we want to attract investment into Wales to create more jobs, we need to give curricular priority to science, technology, basic English literacy and numeracy, not Welsh.

Authorised bilingual graffiti disfigures public walls, train windows, street signs and motorway gantries, confusing visitors and annoying most residents. Our ears are abused by Welsh rasped at us over electronic amplifiers in post offices, railway stations and even in supermarkets.

The objection is not that Welsh is spoken by Welsh speakers (good luck to them) but that we non-Welsh speakers are forced to hear it, to read it and, more significantly, to pay for it.

Welsh Labour Party complacency and apathy among the Anglo-Welsh population has allowed Plaid Cymru, a minority party in South Wales, championed by voters from outside the area, a disproportionate amount of power as reward for coalition in the Assembly.

Language Acts have been rushed through and fluency in Welsh has become the pre-requisite for employment and promotion in top jobs in areas of Wales which had formerly felt enlightened to be exempt from its parochial constraints.

Scottish Nationalists are realistic about their ancient language and look forward and outward, not backward and inward to their place in the real world.